The barred enclosure was very much like the one in which their fellow jihadis in Syria burned alive Jordanian pilot Mouath al-Kasaesbeh, igniting a storm across a troubled kingdom in an uneasy alliance with the West against Islamic State (IS).

VALLEY OF THE CROWS, northern Iraq, Feb 4 (Reuters) – The black
banner of the Islamic State, fixed to a shack within sight of
this frontline, is evidence of the existential threat menacing
the Kurds from across the 1,000-km long frontier.

Kurdish Peshmerga fighters are digging trenches and building
defense berms in Wadi al-Ghorab (Valley Of The Crows), less than
2 km away from the IS-held Sultan Abdullah village, which
demarcates the new border of their autonomous region.

VALLEY OF THE CROWS, northern Iraq, Feb 4 (Reuters) – The black banner of the Islamic State, fixed to a shack within sight of this frontline, is evidence of the existential threat menacing the Kurds from across the 1,000-km long frontier.

Kurdish Peshmerga fighters are digging trenches and building defence berms in Wadi al-Ghorab (Valley Of The Crows), less than 2 km away from the IS-held Sultan Abdullah village, which demarcates the new border of their autonomous region.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanese Prime Minister Tammam Salam believes a deal settling the Iranian nuclear dispute could help pave the way towards ending the political deadlock that has left his country without a president since May.

The Mediterranean country of about 4 million has been hit hard by the war in its much larger neighbor Syria, with violence spilling across the border and threatening the fragile sectarian balance that has largely held since Lebanon’s own 1975-90 civil war.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – When Sunni rebels rose up against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in 2011, Turkey reclassified its protégé as a pariah, expecting him to lose power within months and join the autocrats of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen on the scrap heap of the “Arab Spring”.

Assad, in contrast, shielded diplomatically by Russia and with military and financial support from Iran and its Shi’ite allies in Lebanon’s Hezbollah, warned that the fires of Syria’s sectarian war would burn its neighbors.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – When Sunni rebels rose up against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in 2011, Turkey reclassified its protégé as a pariah, expecting him to lose power within months and join the autocrats of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen on the scrap heap of the “Arab Spring”.

Assad, in contrast, shielded diplomatically by Russia and with military and financial support from Iran and its Shi’ite allies in Lebanon’s Hezbollah, warned that the fires of Syria’s sectarian war would burn its neighbours.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – American-led and Arab-backed air strikes carrying the fight against Islamic State from Iraq into Syria have dragged Washington into a new Middle East war – exactly the kind of conflict Barack Obama spent his presidency trying to avoid.

No one doubts this dramatic escalation presages a long conflict that could spill into neighboring states and that U.S. air power alone cannot win.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – American-led and Arab-backed air strikes carrying the fight against Islamic State from Iraq into Syria have dragged Washington into a new Middle East war – exactly the kind of conflict Barack Obama spent his presidency trying to avoid.

No one doubts this dramatic escalation presages a long conflict that could spill into neighbouring states and that U.S. air power alone cannot win.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Ridiculed at first, the new power which has seized a third of Iraq and triggered the first American air strikes since the U.S. troop withdrawal in 2011 – has carved itself a powerful and possibly lasting presence in the Middle East.

The bombing of fighters of the Sunni Islamic State is unlikely to turn around Iraq and its fragmented condition has given the self-proclaimed caliphate the opportunity to establish a hub of jihadism in the heart of the Arab world.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Ridiculed at first, the new power which has seized a third of Iraq and triggered the first American air strikes since the U.S. troop withdrawal in 2011 – has carved itself a powerful and possibly lasting presence in the Middle East.

The bombing of fighters of the Sunni Islamic State is unlikely to turn around Iraq and its fragmented condition has given the self-proclaimed caliphate the opportunity to establish a hub of jihadism in the heart of the Arab world.